A Painful Deadline Nears as Colorado River Reservoirs Run Critically Low

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts.html

By Henry Fountains, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: States in the Colorado River basin are scrambling to propose steep cuts in the water they’ll use from the river next year, in response to a call by the federal government for immediate, drastic efforts to keep the river’s main storage reservoirs from reaching critically low levels. The request comes with the Southwest still in the grip of a severe two-decade drought that shows no signs of letting up. And it comes on top of earlier, less desperate, efforts to keep more water in the two reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, including a first-ever shortage declaration last year that cut water to farmers in Arizona. ...the long-term outlook for the Colorado is bleak, as climate change continues to affect runoff into the river and reduces the likelihood of a series of wet years that could end the drought. The request for cuts has further exposed the fault lines between the upper basin states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming and the lower basin states, California, Arizona and Nevada. The upper basin states note that they do not use all the water allocated to them, and that the most significant cuts will have to come from the lower basin states, which use more than their allocated share.… 

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